Supervisor, Schools Bridge Uganda

Bridge International Academies (Bridge) partners with parents and communities to create powerful, transformative schools that guarantee that all pupils, regardless of their parent’s income or the language they speak at home, are supported in realizing their full potential and can enjoy a gateway to success.
We create ‘community schools’ that provide life-changing education which transforms lives and opens the door to a successful future for our pupils. We do this by delivering academic excellence through accelerated learning, leadership skills development and providing a caring environment that supports growth. We empower a network of committed, trained and prepared teachers while leveraging technology. Our pedagogical techniques also are advanced and in line with best practices, and we deploy world-class lessons to develop the most effective teacher training and support techniques, all with the aim of creating a truly pupil-centred classroom.

Since opening our first schools in Eastern Uganda in 2015, our pupils have continued to exceed expectations and excel. Pupils at Bridge Uganda have consistently achieved top performance in the Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE), receiving merit admissions, some on scholarship, into some of the top, most prestigious secondary schools in Uganda.

At Bridge, we believe that quality education has the power to transform the future of Uganda’s youth. In joining us, you will become part of a team of dynamic and passionate Ugandans and East Africans who are taking concrete action to help ensure a better future for all of Uganda.

Schools
Schools is the heart of our work. The team is mandated to inspire teachers to teach with passion, pupils to learn with purpose, parents to believe in a better future for their children, and communities to become the change they want to see in the world. To achieve this vision, the team ensures schools are smoothly run – the school team is motivated and inspired, delivering life-changing lessons, creating an experience that makes parents stay with us, and also cultivating interest and excitement in our work in communities where we serve. Schools is responsible for ensuring all of the work created by our expert teams, including Instructional Design, Leadership & Development, Technology, Communications, Creative and Insight, are used in each school, and each school is managed to achieve its goal of ensuring every child enjoys a learning environment that develops her core skills, knowledge and confidence.

The performance of the entire organization is led by the Schools Group, which is responsible for the day-to-day management of each school. Schools work to strengthen school enrollment and student retention, ensuring every school is regarded as the strongest school in its neighborhood and delivers on improved learning outcomes for children, and earns the trust of the parents.

We engage with school leaders and teachers every day, ensuring ongoing professional development, performance management, and intensive coaching. We are always seeking effective ways of ensuring every school is supported with data-driven practices. We measure our success through both the financial sustainability of the school and the learning outcomes of the children in the classroom. We are performance-driven.

About the Role
Each Supervisor is responsible for the professional development, including ongoing performance management of school staff. As a Supervisor, you are in schools each day, providing ongoing mentorship, specific performance feedback, and on-going group and personal training. In this role, you also engage with all stakeholders of the schools under your care, including government officials, parents, and community groups as may be required. Your role is the nexus of all that we do, ensuring the implementation and results of our overall programing, integrating school management, leadership & development of school staff, instructional design and technology. Using big data that provides visibility into everyday teaching practices and school management, you work with school staff to improve performance – with the goal of student performance and character development in mind – and provide feedback on core programming to our design teams.

This team is laser focused on outcomes, inherently collaborative in nature, loves fostering leadership in others, is unwaveringly committed to ensuring a quality education for our pupils, and is excited about creating incredible learning interventions that drive positive behavior and mindset change in adults. You will flourish on this team if you are: a team player, hyper-focused on results, flexible in a dynamic environment, and have fun while working hard.

Supervisors also handle facilities and supplies needs at schools. They are required to identify, analyze and/or estimate all materials including learning operational needs, design strategies and processes to address these challenges, and supervise the necessary training, monitoring, and constant adjustments needed for these programmes to execute successfully.

What You Will Do
1. Be responsible for supervising the work of all school leaders in your assigned area, including all aspects of School Management, and community and parent engagement. Ensure each school leader delivers on promise of learning and holistic development for children, has a strong and high-performing cohort of teachers, operates within its budget and sustains enrollment necessary for financial sustainability;
2. Use data from multiple sources, including your own classroom observations and school management observations, quality assurance audits, and big data on school staff behavior, to lead school staff to improve their practice, with an unwavering eye to student learning and holistic development.
3. Use data from multiple sources to ensure effective school management, and a safe learning environment.
4. Be in schools 60% time, observing teaching, management, and engaging with stakeholders, including government officials, parents, and community groups.
When observing or holding meetings, use rubrics or other documents to support structured observation and reporting.
6. Support specific school events, including collaborating on programming for such events as school opening celebrations, parent teacher conferences and school closing celebrations, as well as community showcases and participation in co-curricular competitions.
7. Ensure school staff and students are prepared to sit in government-proctored exams, as they may occur on a termly/semester basis, and with particular attention to national examinations.
8. Ensure school strength and support enrollment efforts.
9. Ensure local regulatory processes are followed, including environmental & social standards, as well as national regulations.
10. Lead leadership & development sessions the course of the school year, and during induction training for new staff, using the materials and programming developed by the Leadership & Development team.
11. Support schools through transition of staff, including school leaders and teachers; work with local government and other local organizations as needed.
Manage the timely, prompt, efficient and cost-effective distribution of all learning materials, cleaning supplies, physical tools and other items required at schools, in the needed quantities
13. Maintain complete, accurate and up-to-date records of all material and tools inventory at schools
14. Utilize data to determine materials and tools’ quantities per academy to ensure that all materials and tools needed are available all the time, and escalate patterns along with recommendations for improvement
15. Attend to requests made from the schools to the Operations department quickly, seeing to their prompt and effective resolution
16. Project-manage operations-related, school-level events (including repair and maintenance works) to ensure they happen promptly or as they fall due, to ensure compliance with regulations as well as the safety of pupils, academy staff, contractors and other visitors to the schools’ premises

What You Should Have
1. Proven community leadership experience, leading teams of people to accomplish an objective
2. Experience in mentorship and coaching of youth and adults, either inside or outside of a school setting
3. Teaching experience a plus
4. Belief in data-driven decision making
5. Relentless focus on achievement for yourself and others
6. Bias towards action
7. Flexible and loves to work in a dynamic environment
8. Collaborative leader with strong relationship building skills
9. Strong interpersonal skills
10. Strong communication skills
11. Proficiency in Microsoft Excel and experience with the analysis of large data sets
12. A keen eye for detail
13. Sound negotiation skills
14. Good writing and presentation skills

You’re also
1. A detailed doer – You have a track record of getting things done. You’re organized and responsive. You take ownership of every idea you touch and execute it to a fine level of detail, setting targets, engaging others, and doing whatever it takes to get the job done. You can multi-task dozens of such projects at once and never lose sight of the details. Likely, you have some experience in a start-up or other rapid-growth company.
2. A networking mastermind – You excel at meeting new people and turning them into advocates. You communicate in a clear, conscientious, and effective way in both written and oral speech. You can influence strangers in the course of a single conversation. Allies and colleagues will go to bat for your ideas. You have an existing network from prior experience in the country, preferably in the regulatory, education, or business sectors.
A creative problem-solver – Growing any business from scratch comes with massive and constant challenges. On top of that, Bridge works in often fragile, sometimes volatile low-resource communities and with complex government systems. You need to be flexible and ready to get everything done effectively, quickly, and affordably with the materials at hand.
4. A relentless advocate – The children we serve and teachers we empower never leave your mind. You know them, get them, have shared a meal with them (or would be happy to in the future). You would never shrink back from shaking a parent’s hand or picking up a crying child, no matter what the person was wearing or looked like. Every decision you make considers their benefit, experience, and value.
5. A malleable learner – You believe you can always do better. You welcome constructive criticism and provide it freely to others. You know you only get better tomorrow when others point out where you’ve missed things or failed today.
6. A data-driven decision-maker – When making decisions, you don’t rely on your intuition alone. You collect data, you analyze it and make decisions with clear justifications.
7. A curious investigator – You ask why a lot. You don’t just take what you see and accept it. You wonder why it is that way, and are aware that the world we see is created by human choices and actions – and it could be different. You wonder, and see the world as wonderful even when you want to change a part of it that is unjust.